New Designs by Tinatin Kilaberidze

Valerie Goodman Gallery is pleased to invite you to the second solo show of the acclaimed furniture and interior designer Tinatin Kilaberidze. Known for her simultaneously rigorous and opulent furniture and accessories, the Georgian-born artist  - whose many facets include a background in literature and architecture -  will display her new pieces. Please join Tinatin Kilaberidze's at our inviting installation of unique designs for a reception on September 13th (6:00pm to 8:00pm, 315 East 91st Street.) 

"I would rather live in a convent than in a disorganized place," says Tinatin Kilaberidze: her designs express just this passion for clarity.  Most of her furniture is made of straight angles and perfect circles. But purity is only a point of departure: "When you start out from there, you leave room for emotions." The many narrowly spaced panels at the base of her very long bench mimic the steady rhythm of a colonnade and evoke a sense of solidity but also of a kind of grandeur: the generous use of fine wood defies the utter sobriety of her design with joy of abundance. With the padding pressed tightly against their woolen skins, Kilabertidze's curvaceous lounge chair and its attendant foot-rest seem to bask in their voluptuous sensuality, —reveling equally in their rich materiality and counter-linearity. Kilaberidze's oak dining room chair presents a starkly rectangular front while its hind-legs widen unexpectedly towards the ground, bringing to mind an elegant, minimalist shoe with an extravagant heel. The chair's creamy white silk cushions speak the same language of barely restrained luxury as its meticulously crafted, bony frame. 

It is always wood, fabric, and metal that have the first and the last word: Kilaberidze devotes a great amount of time to selecting and refining her materials, especially wood. The designer uses no stains or lacquers. "The life of the object is in the grain of the wood, its color and tactility. She appreciates three esthetic elements she in nature —simplicity, geometry, and balance. To those she adds contrast as well as an edge of drama by exaggerating conventional proportions. However, Kilaberidze never finds her own modernist philosophy in contradiction to a love for the organic. The principles of nature are also at work, for example, in her bronze standing lamps: just like a plant's roots, leaves and blossoms evolve from the same genetic program, the black patina of the lamp's foot and stem are just a variation of its polished, golden head.